Last week was pretty busy trying to clean up the water mess and get things taken care of at work. I did manage to get all my Christmas shopping done, along with all the "leaving town for a while" errands.

On Friday a few friends and I played hooky to do some snowboarding. The mountains have really be getting hit hard with the snow, so it seemed like a good time to take a vacation day. We got 16 challenging runs in on Friday, and another 11 in on Saturday. I was pretty spent after Friday, Saturday was a lot rougher going. The snow conditions were great, and the crowds were non-existent. The high on Saturday was 6 degrees, which may have scared a few people off. We all got a bit of wind-burn on our faces, but it was worth it.

Sunday involved a little work, more trip and Christmas errands, and a lot of recovering from snowboarding. I tried petting the cats a bit extra since neither Kristen and I would be around for a bit.

Kristen did make it to England OK and has been sending me updates on the trip via e-mail. She just recently returned from a trip to Wales and took some great pictures.

I ended staying up until 4:30 fighting the various water issues coming through my ceiling. I think I used every pot, pan, bowl, and bucket that we own. Very little got on the carpet, but there is some drywall damage. Luckily the condo association will pay fix it, so other than some inconvenience, it wasn't too big of a deal.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with timely posts. Just not enough hours in the day.

Last week was pretty crazy. We had corporate visitors in town for the first half of the week, and the fallout of their visit kept us really busy through Friday. My brain was frazzled by the end of the week. Friday while brushing my teeth I thought I had dropped the toothpaste off of the toothbrush before it made it to my mouth. As I was brushing I looked around the floor to see if I could see where it dropped. Not finding it on the floor, I felt around in my mouth, thinking perhaps that it was hiding out in there somewhere. No luck there. I mentally retraced my steps, and came to the horrifying realization that I'd put face lotion on the toothbrush, not toothpaste. Yuck!

Kristen and I met up with her Dad and Step mom for dinner in Platteville. Bruce told a joke about a woman receiving a fax from her butt, which received a mixture of laughter and rolling of eyes. Later, Kristen and I headed out for a beer with a few of my coworkers to celebrate the end of the week. Unfortunately we were all so burnt that it was a pretty lackluster affair.

Saturday involved going to the mall to do yet more X-mas shopping. It seems to never end. Afterward Kristen and I headed to the mountains to celebrate her birthday. It snowed like crazy on Saturday night, which gave me more excuses to try out the new vehicle on icy roads. It's pretty sweet.

We got back to town early on Sunday. Most of Sunday was spent getting Kristen ready for her England trip. She got all packed up, and was ready to go.

Monday I drove her to the airport around noon. I haven't gotten the "I've arrived" e-mail yet, but I'm assuming she made it. Meanwhile the cats and I have been trying to stay warm. Cody's has had it worse, but we had a high of -4 on Monday.

I love technology. Here's a picture of Aida taken with my new camcorder. The resolution on the thing is crazy. Oops, it looks like this actually a quarter of the resolution that it normally is, I can't quite yet figure out how to get a full resolution picture off of the thing yet.



It can store about 2 hours of video at that resolution at 30 frames per second on a 16 gig SDHC card. Here's a picture of the card next to a quarter. To put things in perspective, our Commodore 64 we had in the early eighties had 64K of memory. That tiny card can store 262,144 times more data than that first computer could.




I was just about to hit "Publish Post" when a strange noise came from the other room. The vacant upstairs condo had a pipe bust, and apparently it just thawed out. The Fire Department was here, I have all my buckets and pots out trying to contain the deluge. Looks like I'll be up late tonight.

The doldrums of fall have passed, and we had yet another active weekend. Friday my boss was in town, we had a pretty exciting meeting. Meanwhile, Kristen picked up her date for the weekend, Maddock, and sister Allison was more than happy to pawn the guy off for a night. Luckily Katie showed up to help out, and between the two of them they kept him out of trouble.


The three of them slept on the pull out bed. I got up early to go snowboarding only to find Kristen and Katie wide awake with Maddock sleeping between them, snoring loudly. They quickly whispered that they had been up for hours, dealing with the kicking, punching, and weird noises that were emanating from the diminutive boy. Unfortunately I was too preoccupied with snowboarding to snap a picture.

My day was a lot of fun, the snow wasn't too bad, and Morrissey and I managed to find some runs that were challenging enough to keep us interested. We brought a new friend Josh with us who is new to snowboarding. He had a lot of fun, even through all the falls.

I returned home to the aftermath of a large cookie baking party. Allison and Cassie (and Ashley) had shown up to help bake cookies, it sounds like there was a bit of pandemonium. Maddock had fun helping.


Everyone left except for Katie. Kristen, Katie and myself were exhausted from our days activities, and went to bed pretty early. Katie took off early on Sunday. Kristen and I headed out for some Christmas shopping and lunch.

At various points during the day Kristen mocked me a bit for being so sore from my day of snowboarding. I heard things like "I HURT ALL OVER!" and "I'M AN OLD MAN AND CAN BARELY MOOOVE!". Hilarious, that girl.

We relaxed for the rest of the day, in preparation for the week ahead.

Finally, we've had a few active weekends. I took off to Indiana on Thursday the 20th. I arrived an hour or two late for Luther's funeral, but got to meet the 30+ people at the farm for the wake. I bet the last time that many people were there was for Hugh's wedding. It was fun re-meeting several people I hadn't seen since I was a wee lad.

I was amazed at all the wind damage on the farm. Much of the woods seemed impassible due to the large number of blown down trees.


Dad kept himself busy burning brush piles and cutting up fallen trees. I got a little practice in with a chainsaw one day when we cleared the trails to the treehouse.


The treehouse escaped unscathed, which I attribute more to luck and a good location than anything else. I did stay in the treehouse each night even though the temperatures were dropping into the teens. Luckily I had a good sleeping back and several wool blankets.



We visited Pat's Swamp Shack one evening. She'd just gotten a wood burning stove installed, which seemed quite luxurious. It was a lot of fun comparing notes on shack building and seeing where'd she'd made different decisions.


The treehouse saw a lot of visitors this trip. After Luther's funeral we had 9 people in it at one point. Granted, three of them were children, but I'm still counting it as the record. Sandy and Tata made it over one day, as did Tommy.



The weather was all over the map while I was there. There was one nice day, several cloudy days, it snowed one day, and rained the next. The creeks would freeze over during the night, and all the water I carried down to the treehouse slowly froze over a few nights.


Luckily the main house stayed warm, and Ma kept the stoves fed with firewood. Lena spent a lot of time staying close the warmth. She would venture out for walks occasionally, but if we were too boring she's head back to the house.



It was a fun trip, and I enjoyed hanging out with the folks. Getting a wood burning stove in the treehouse got bumped up in the priority list a bit, maybe one will go in this next year.


The trip back was uneventful. It's no longer possible to get a direct flight from Denver to Louisville, but all my travel went smoothly, even with the layovers. I was glad to get back to a warm shower and bed.

Last week was a short week at work, then Thanksgiving preparations started. Kristen put on a good thanksgiving meal, she successfully fed 8 people, the Pumpkin Pie ice cream being a favorite. With the new couch and chairs the place wasn't too crowded, and everyone had a place to sit. We unfortunately didn't take many pictures.


Life will get back to normal next week. I have work people in town toward the end of the week, and Kristen is planning a big cookie making party on Friday. The weather should warm up into the 50s which will be nice.

Happy Birthday Ma! I hope you had a good one!

Friday night Kristen and I headed out to see the annual Warren Miller movie with a few friends. It was a lot fun as always, and we'd finally gotten our first snow of the year earlier in the morning. It had melted by the time the movie started, but it still got everyone in the mood for some skiing or snowboarding. We missed breaking the record for the latest snow fall by one day.

Saturday involved laying around the house, and biking into work for a half day. I've almost made up the time for this upcoming trip, I still have half a day to sneak in somewhere. Kristen laid pretty low, doing some more Christmas planning.

Sunday morning was the annual Panicking Poultry run. A few of the same friends we saw on Friday night showed up, and we all enjoyed the beautiful 70+ degree weather. The food was good, although we passed this year on the early morning free beer. Kristen won a nice hoody sweatshirt that fits me quite well. I'll be using it keep warm this upcoming weekend.

Tuesday evening Kristen's office had a 5k race, I headed over there and we both ran it. I met a few of her coworkers, and generally enjoyed yet another record breaking day (78 degrees).

I'm heading to the airport early tomorrow, my flight leaves at 6:15 am. I'm excited to get back and see the folks, I haven't seen much of them this year.

There's been a whole lot of squat going on. It'd be easier to make weekly posts if we had anything interesting to post about.

I've been working 6 day weeks trying to bank up some time for the upcoming Indiana trip. This makes for a short weekend, and we've just been taking Saturday's slow so I can recuperate for the next week.

Speaking of preparations for the Indiana trip, I've tried convincing Kristen that we should sleep with all the windows open at night, in order to "simulate the treehouse experience". She didn't see the need for her to get a preview, since she's not going. Oh well.

Kristen has been doing various mysterious activities in preparation for Christmas. I've helped a little here and there, unfortunately I can't post much about that without ruining Christmas morning surprises.

Last Sunday the fox that we often see running by the office decided to take a nap right outside the office window. They really look like they should be a pet up close. I wonder if people have tried to raise them as pets...


The weather continued to be beautiful here up until last Wednesday or so. I've managed to ride the bike in to work 5 days a week for the last month or so. It's getting cold enough now that I may do a bit more driving from here on out.

We've been enjoying Becky's blog lately, since there's actually some activity over there. Steve's pictures are very impressive, they make us want to take photography classes.